


Wide Eyes Burn Blind

by narcissablaxk



Series: Now or Never [6]
Category: Cobra Kai (Web Series), Karate Kid (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Flashbacks, Hurt/Comfort, KK3 References, M/M, Mental Illness, PTSD, Trauma, lawrusso
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 08:21:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24966643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narcissablaxk/pseuds/narcissablaxk
Summary: Oh, we'll be looking for sunlight, or the headlights 'til our wide eyes burn blind. We'll be lacing the same shoes that we've worn through to the bottom of the line, and we know that we're headstrong, and our heart's gone, and the timing's never right. But for now let's get away on a Roman holiday.Johnny and Daniel attend a Karate1 Premier Competition that brings up some old demons for Daniel.
Relationships: Daniel LaRusso/Johnny Lawrence
Series: Now or Never [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1772686
Comments: 7
Kudos: 144





	Wide Eyes Burn Blind

**Author's Note:**

> TW for PTSD and PTSD flashbacks in this one, everyone. If that's something that upsets you, please do not read.

Daniel LaRusso was used to being haunted. He was constantly hearing his father’s voice, the comforting timbre that had started to fade as he got older, echoing in the distance, a shadow in a statement of his own. He was haunted by Mr. Miyagi. That one he didn’t mind as much. It was bittersweet, an ache that he relished when it appeared because with it came gilded memories that never lost their luster. 

He was shadowed, by contrast, by people he’d rather forget. There were no good memories with them, only flashes that took his breath away and left him feeling like someone had reached into his guts and pulled a handful out, splattering them across the floor. 

His therapist – that he had seen less than five times in his early thirties – called it post-traumatic stress disorder. She had linked it back to Kreese, to Cobra Kai, to Terry Silver. _Those adult men put you through things no teenager should have to go through,_ she’d said earnestly, in that open way he always assumed therapists talked. _You will have to confront that trauma so you can move past it. And if the PTSD still lingers, then we can think about other ways of managing it._

He hadn’t gone back. 

It wasn’t that he didn’t believe her, it was that he felt ashamed, suddenly, that he hadn’t been able to come to that conclusion on his own, that he hadn’t managed to divine his own demons, corner them, and set them on fire. He hadn’t managed to burn them out on his own.

He thought about her, this therapist, on the warm summer nights when he woke drenched in sweat, breathing heavily into his bedroom, alone but for the sounds of Terry’s voice, Kreese’s laugh. He thought about going back. But how could he justify himself to her, his long absence? The likelihood that she was still practicing was slim, he thought, and there was his excuse. 

He would force himself back onto his bed, roll over in the damp sheets, and force himself to go back to sleep, and in the morning, all nightmares of the previous night would be forgotten.

But he remembered them now, suddenly, standing in the aisle of the Nokia Theatre (now called the Microsoft Theatre) beside Johnny Lawrence at the Karate1 Premier League competition. As a member of the board back in his hometown, Daniel had access to the biggest karate competition in the world when he wanted it, if said competition happened to be relatively local. 

But it was never local, because Daniel didn’t have that kind of luck, save for this year, so he’d jumped on it, and he had offered the other ticket to Johnny in what he now considered to be a moment of weakness. They had called a truce on their decades-long rivalry, especially after Johnny’s long and hard-fought battle with Kreese ended in success, and he retained the ownership of Cobra Kai’s dojo. 

He hadn’t been a part of that battle, but Johnny had promised that he was paying close attention to the lessons he was teaching his students, and had stuck out his hand, looking as sincere as Daniel had ever seen him look, asking for a ceasefire. 

“I can’t fight another battle like that,” he’d said, and the words were soft, like he was struggling to get them out, and Daniel shook his hand, deciding then that he would give Johnny the benefit of the doubt, if only this once. 

Miyagi-do had reopened, in time, and things had gone back to normal. Well, as normal as it could possibly get. So several months later and here he was, standing next to his high school rival in a huge convention center, ready to watch talented fighters compete for an opportunity to be in the Olympics. 

“LaRusso,” Johnny said, the pointedness in his name telling Daniel he’d called him more than once already. “I’m going to get a beer, do you want one?” 

It was a surprisingly thoughtful gesture, but Daniel shook his head anyway, and Johnny gave him an unreadable look before trotting down the stairs, his leather jacket’s collar just barely popped, brushing against his golden hair as he went. 

He wanted to look at his phone, but he looked around the room instead, seeing everyone’s faces illuminated by their glowing phone screens. 

_Won’t be playing into that stereotype, thank you very much,_ he thought triumphantly, turning his eyes to the stage instead. 

It took Johnny ages to get his beer, but when he came back, he came with a little additional cup, bright-colored and with a great yellow bendy straw sticking out of it. He held it up to Daniel the way an owner would a new chew toy to their pet dog, his eyes wide and cartoonishly elated. Daniel tilted his head at him, his brow furrowed. 

_What the fuck,_ his face said.

“I got you a drink,” Johnny said as an explanation, passing Daniel the little cup. 

He didn’t look closer at it, but turned his unamused eyes to Johnny, who was patently trying and failing to hide a smug grin. “What the hell is this?” he deadpanned. 

“It’s lemonade,” Johnny replied, taking a swig of his beer. “You don’t drink soda, so.” 

He was expecting some smartass comment about being a big baby, not an observation about his dietary habits. Daniel snapped his mouth shut, thwarted, and turned back to the stage, Johnny’s leg bouncing an anxious rhythm next to him. 

“Also, it looks like it fits your tiny little hands.” 

_There it was._

“Oh fuck you,” he muttered, dropping his volume on the vulgarity, casting his eyes around for any children. “My hands are proportionate –”

And then the lights were going out, and Johnny was stifling a laugh behind his fist, and Daniel stepped on his toes for good measure, shoving his own feet hard under his chair where Johnny couldn’t retaliate, feeling momentarily weightless, like a kid again, unhaunted and unburdened. These moments happened more often with Johnny now that they had called a truce. It was a weird deviation from their old ribbing, where the comments and pranks had a predetermined line that they were not to cross. They had never discussed the line, but had come to it naturally, as if, somehow, both parties were uninterested in actually upsetting the other. 

But he hadn’t given much thought to the specifics. 

Johnny leaned over in his seat, far enough that his head was almost resting on Daniel’s shoulder. “So they’re not going to fight each other, right?” 

Daniel wanted to roll his eyes. They’d discussed this in the car, but Johnny was too caught up in changing his tapes to retain any of the information. “Some of them will, later. First they’re doing some demonstrations.” 

“On a scale of one to pissy, how mad would you be if I yelled out ‘ _give ‘em a body bag_ ’?” Johnny asked, and Daniel turned to him, Johnny meeting him and catching his gaze, so close their noses were almost touching. 

“ _Don’t,_ ” Daniel warned, pulling back a few inches, but Johnny was so excited to be here, he could feel it coming off of him in waves, that he felt a smile creeping up. 

“Come on, LaRusso, it’s a classic,” Johnny whispered as an announcer stepped onto the stage, holding a microphone. “ _Give ‘em a body bag,_ ” he said, quietly, almost into his ear, waving his fist around for good measure. 

“I will push you down those stairs,” Daniel muttered, but he was halfway to a laugh already, and Johnny nudged him with his shoulder, as if pointing it out. 

They watched the demonstrations begin, catching the other’s attention when someone did something particularly impressive, a series of wordless swats on legs, arms, chest, pointing excitedly at something, and the childish giddiness was back again, like sitting at the circus, before he realized what those people did to the animals he loved so much.

Johnny, beside him, was just as enthralled, and there was a security in that reaction that Daniel relished. He didn’t have to worry about being the most enthusiastic one this time – he and Johnny were on each other’s level, equals in every moment.

Over half an hour in and they watched a fighter do a move that Daniel couldn’t even consider attempting, even at his peak fitness, some sort of backflip kick thing that he was at a loss to describe, and he and Johnny went to get the other’s attention at the same time, hands meeting over the armrest between them. 

They left them there, Daniel’s hand over Johnny’s, unmoving, comfortable. It could almost be domestic, an easy shift in what they already were, and even when they wanted to get the other’s attention, their hands stayed connected, both of them wordlessly unwilling to break it. 

And then Daniel’s nightmare came to life, and the entire convention center closed in on him. 

***

He could hear Johnny’s voice, as if from down a long tunnel, calling his name, a desperate press of his voice against something that felt like his skin, but it was too far for him to do anything but hear it. He couldn’t hold onto it, he couldn’t let it carry him out. Every time Johnny’s voice came, it was beat away, relentlessly, like the tide, by Terry’s voice, by Kreese’s laughter, by the white hot burn of the wood against his skin, the burning feel of his blood slithering through his body, and even though he knew he wasn’t bleeding, he was still frantically swiping at his hands, at his foot. 

_If a man can’t see, he can’t fight._

_If a man can’t stand, he can’t fight._

He couldn’t _breathe._ He put his hands around his own throat, trying to make sure it was untouched, that no one was trying to choke him. Johnny’s voice was getting closer, but he was grasping at it with separated fingers, and the sand kept leaking through. 

His breath in his ears was a roaring windfall, but there was nothing pressing on his throat but his own hands now, and he could feel someone pulling them away, taking his hands in their own, soft and gentle and scared, because they were shaking, but why were _they_ scared? They weren’t the ones lost in this nightmare, they weren’t the ones dripping blood all over the floor. 

He felt the disorienting reality that his eyes were wide open, but he couldn’t see anything. If anything, he could feel air on his eyes, drying them out, but still, his vision wasn’t registering. He saw, instead, the peeling paint of the old Cobra Kai dojo, the plastic fluttering in the breeze, the cinderblock walls behind it. 

Someone took hold of his hand firmly, and another hand was pressed to his cheek, gently caressing, but that didn’t feel right, _that_ wasn’t real, _this_ was real, he thought, this, the bright, too alert eyes of Terry Silver floating in the haze of the summer heat, Kreese’s broad shoulders, blocking the exit. 

“Daniel,” he heard it this time, so close it had to be something he could hold onto and he wanted to, he ached to reach out and hold onto that voice, but could he? He felt the hand in his tighten, the hand on his face still painfully gentle. “Dan, hey, it’s okay, you’re okay.” 

His vision swam, a swirling miasma of color that filled everything like edges of a painting before they settled in their correct places, fluttering and slowing every time he blinked, and he could hear his breath again, loud and fast in his ears. 

The hand on his face landed on his chest, over his heart. “You have to breathe slower,” the voice said, and he looked down, feeling like his head was filled with cement, and the hand on his chest was solid, strong, protective. 

He looked up, his neck straining with the amount of force it took to move, and found Johnny Lawrence looking worriedly at him, so pale he was practically ashen, his jaw a hard line. He realized, as soon as he recognized him, that they were in a different place than they had been before all this – and then his knees buckled. 

Johnny caught him like he had been expecting it, hoisting him up in his arms, bridal style, and he didn’t say anything snarky, and that was when Daniel realized that something bad must have happened. _He_ must have happened. 

“Fuck,” the word slipped out without any provocation, and he could feel Johnny nod against him. 

“I got you now, LaRusso,” he said, and Daniel let his head roll so it rested on his chest. “I’ve got you.” 

***

He woke in the backseat of a car, carefully buckled in and sitting up. Johnny was behind the wheel, the lights of the city sliding past in little blurs of color that were so bright that Daniel closed his eyes again. His whole body felt like it had been systematically beaten while he was out, his limbs forced full of lead, too heavy to move. His head ached in radiating waves that felt like a lancing sound radiating between his ears. 

“Hey,” Johnny’s voice was deliberately soft. 

“Where –”

“Almost to the hotel,” Johnny explained, and he caught Daniel’s gaze in the rear view, for just a moment, and Daniel could still see the worried furrow in his brow. “Are you –?”

“I’m fine.” 

Johnny took the bitten reply with nothing more than a blink, and shifted in his seat, his eyes returning completely to the road. “Okay.” 

It was a quick business, getting to the hotel and getting checked in – Johnny left him in the car, engine idling, while he dealt with everything, handing their bags off to a young man in a uniform who took it all away with a solemn nod. Daniel watched it all happen from the backseat, with the stupor and lethargy of a drunk, trying to time his breathing so that it wouldn’t hurt at the same times his head pounded. It took most of his strength, so when Johnny came to get him, he accepted the arm Johnny offered him and let him lead him to their room, a double on the tenth floor. 

“What happened?” he asked once Johnny had wordlessly deposited him on the bed, deliberately keeping his eyes on anything but Daniel. 

“These kids were doing one of their demonstrations, and they wheeled out this…thing,” Johnny made the motion with his hands to indicate a mannequin, “all made of wood. And then you just –” he paused, taking in Daniel’s face carefully. “You look like you’re going to barf.” 

He felt like it, too. Johnny sat at the edge of the bed, just inches away from Daniel’s foot, and waited for him to speak. When he didn’t, he continued. 

“You stood up and said you had to go, and you ran out of there,” he said, speaking so slowly it was like he was trying to choose his words when he had none to pick. “I followed you –”

“Why?”

“Because you looked kind of like you do now,” Johnny replied, “like you’re looking at a fucking ghost, or like you’re about to pass out again, or something, and I was…”

“ _What?_ ” Daniel asked, his voice painfully loud in the stillness of the hotel room, their bags still unpacked, everything in an unceremonious pile on the floor. This was still someone else’s space, not theirs, not his, and he felt rather like he was trying to be heard in a hurricane while he alone was standing in the eye. “You were what?” 

“I was worried about you,” he answered. “You’re a lot of things, LaRusso, but you’re not weak.” 

“You thought I looked weak,” it was a flat statement, a confirmation of everything Daniel had thought of himself since the first time something like this had happened. 

“I said you’re _not_ weak, Jesus fucking Christ, will you listen to me instead of trying to find something to fight with me about?” Johnny leapt up from his spot at the foot of the bed and crossed to the other one, sitting on it and pulling his legs up so he was sitting cross-legged. “You went into the bathroom and you were fucking…I don’t know, I don’t know how to explain it.” 

“Try.” 

Johnny’s eyes found his across the little hallway that separated their two beds, dark and frightened. “You were talking to yourself, you were hitting things. You hit a mirror, cracked it, I think, I didn’t stay to look.” He tore his eyes away and looked down at the carpet. “You were crying. Talking about how you didn’t want to do this anymore, you didn’t want to be part of Cobra Kai.” He shifted uncomfortably on the bed before continuing. “You said Kreese, and Terry…Silver? You were begging for Miyagi to come and save you.” 

Daniel didn’t say anything. The pain in his body was starting to recede, replaced with a resonating exhaustion that he hadn’t felt in a long time. 

“I know what PTSD is, LaRusso,” Johnny said when he didn’t speak. “Dutch had it – he used to just…go away and relive something else and we would all –” he stopped for a second, casting his eyes around the room like he could find the right word, “we would all try to find ways to help him through, but it’s hard.” 

His mouth went tight, like he was holding something back, and then when he spoke again, the tremble in his voice was gone. 

“What did Terry Silver and Kreese do that messed you up this bad?” 

“They didn’t mess me up,” that was a lie, and he knew it the moment the words came out of his mouth, but he couldn’t stop them. “Don’t give them the satisfaction.” 

“No one is giving them anything,” Johnny said. 

“Yes, you are, you’re telling me this is their fault, that they did this to me, they _broke_ me –”

“It is their fault, LaRusso, there’s nothing wrong with blaming them for something they did –”

“No, _fuck you_ , don’t touch me, I don’t want to talk about this –”

Johnny retreated from where he had advanced, only a step away from the side of Daniel’s bed. “I’m not trying to hurt you –”

He knew that, he _knew_ that, but he still _didn’t_ know that, not down at his molecular level, where his adrenaline was still at an all time high, while his body wasn’t able to keep up with it, and then there was Johnny’s face in the yellow light, eyes trying to hide the hurt that the lines in his mouth betrayed. He wanted to apologize, to say that he wasn’t sure what he was saying, or why he was saying it, but the words were clogged, stuck in his esophagus, and he was struggling to breathe past them. 

Johnny wordlessly padded away from him and came back with one of the little plastic cups full of water and the ice bucket, which he set on the edge of the table and then retreated back to his bed. 

“Just in case,” he said, and the words were flat, toneless, and a wave of guilt washed over Daniel again. He was only trying to help, and he was pushing him away, the same way he did everyone else. 

“Kreese and Silver conspired to torture me…after the ’84 All Valley,” he wasn’t sure how to start the story, or that he even wanted to tell it, but once the words started, they were hard to stop. “Terry pretended to be Kreese’s Sensei, and told me that Kreese was dead. He sent a kid to beat me up until I signed up to fight in the next tournament –”

“Because…you _beat_ Cobra Kai?” Johnny’s voice was as small as his, but he could see the incredulity in his face. Even after all Kreese had done, this was still hard to swallow. 

“Because all of his students left,” Daniel shrugged. “Mr. Miyagi wouldn’t train me, because he didn’t believe in the competition, and Terry offered to help, so I agreed.”

Johnny rose from his spot and sat on the edge of Daniel’s bed, reaching for the cup of water and passing it over to Daniel, his eyes pointedly on the cup and then him. Daniel took it and drank, the water a salve that felt like it cooled him from the inside out. 

“What did they do?” he asked when Daniel was done, and he looked every bit the teenager Daniel had seen across the mat at the All Valley, eyes wide and frightened, mouth set. 

“Terry had me practice on a wooden, I don’t know, person, and made me break the wood, but they weren’t karate blocks, they were two by fours, you know, and he just, he kept pushing me, and telling me that I had to be tough, I had to do this for him, because he was giving me lessons for free –”

“He made you break two by fours, at eighteen years old,” Johnny confirmed, and Daniel watched his hands clench and unclench at his sides, the same angry tell that he’d had since they were both in high school. 

“Kreese told him he wanted me to bleed,” Daniel said softly, and Johnny heaved a breath through his nose. “So I did.” 

There was plenty more for him to say, about the guilt that he felt when Miyagi realized what was going on, that he had always known, the sheer terror he’d felt when Kreese reappeared, not dead and gone as promised, the way he saw the scars on his fists every time he did kata, every time he tried to remember Miyagi. There was always the symbol of his betrayal, his foolishness, and it would never leave. 

But he didn’t want to say that, didn’t want to talk about how ashamed he was that something he thought he could get over had only become a festered wound as the years went by, and now it was so much a part of him that he was pretty sure nothing could heal it. 

Johnny moved up to the headboard, so he was sitting beside him, facing the television, black and blank across the way, and didn’t speak. They sat there, Daniel trying to read Johnny’s expression in the reflection of the television, Johnny looking at nothing in particular, lost in his own thoughts. 

“Can I see them?” he finally asked, and Daniel turned halfway to see his face, cast in shadow, his mouth tight like he was holding something back. “The scars, I mean.”

Daniel didn’t ask how he knew; something told him that the question was meant for another time, and instead wordlessly held up his hands, the knuckles riddled with thin spiderweb scars. Johnny took his hands in his own, inspecting the scars, as if he could see them perfectly in the low light, his hands barely there, barely touching. 

And then he leaned forward, pressing his lips to each knuckle in turn, an apology, but for what grievance, Daniel didn’t know. It was soft, softer than Johnny Lawrence seemed capable of being, and when he was done, he threaded his fingers through Daniel’s hand and shifted over in the bed until their shoulders were pressed together, sitting up against the headboard, and Daniel let his head fall onto his shoulder. 

“I’m sorry,” he said eventually, when they had been sitting there in silence so long Daniel thought he might actually drift off to sleep. 

“Thank you,” Daniel murmured, the exhaustion finally taking over completely. 

“Go to sleep,” Johnny said, pulling away so Daniel could slide farther into the bed. “We have a long day tomorrow.” 

“Okay,” Daniel wasn’t listening anymore – he released Johnny’s hand, too far and at an awkward angle for him to hold, and rested his head on his thigh instead, his eyes already closed. 

Johnny didn’t move for a long time, until after he knew Daniel was asleep. He sat there, in the silence, his fingers running through Daniel’s hair almost absently, soothing him the way his mother used to do when he was young. Tomorrow, he thought, they would go back to their dojos, back to their truce, and this would be forgotten. 

But, he thought as Daniel shifted in his sleep, his hand over Johnny’s legs tightening before going slack again with sleep, then again, maybe not.


End file.
